Krasner and Pollock anchor a major new exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past Continuous places Jackson Pollock’s celebrated drip paintings alongside the work of Lee Krasner, long eclipsed by her husband in the public eye, and here recognized on her own terms.
The expansive presentation gathers more than 120 pieces, including 74 by Krasner and 48 by Pollock. Pollock’s monumental skeins of poured paint are in full force, yet the installation asserts Krasner as a pillar of Abstract Expressionism as well.
One of the first striking moments is a 1955 collage by Krasner.
“Collage was very catalytic for her at these crucial moments in her life,” said Brinda Kumar, one of two curators behind the show. “She was literally sometimes tearing up older bodies of work to create a new chapter.”
The piece, Bald Eagle (1955), surges with browns, blacks, fuchsia, and orange, punctuated by a claw-like yellow streak. At its center is a cutout that suggests the head of a bald eagle, the title Krasner chose for the collage.
According to Kumar, Pollock’s discarded paintings provided the raw material for Bald Eagle. “Krasner has very intentionally and deliberately cut up discarded Pollock works from this era in the 1950s, where you can see his distinctive drip still evident,” she said.
Placing Krasner’s collages beside Pollock’s poured canvases opens fresh readings, said curator David Breslin.
“But that doesn’t mean that the individual parts forgo their histories or their pasts,” Breslin said. “We see that almost as a metaphor for couples in relationships as well. You form a unit, yet you also have all the things in your head, in your mind, in your heart that are your own, that don’t change.”
Just beyond the collages, visitors encounter a canonical Pollock, Convergence (1952), its neon orange and electric yellow anticipating the punch of 1980s subway graffiti. The canvas sits on a freestanding wall near windows, daylight infusing it with the verve of a contemporary gallery.
The exhibition implicitly invites comparisons between the wife-and-husband artists. Popular narratives often cast Pollock as the tormented genius, while Krasner is relegated to the role of supporter. She knew the perception but was unfazed.
In a 1978 appearance on the television program Inside New York’s Art World, Krasner was asked what she was doing while Pollock’s fame grew.
“I was working all the time,” she replied. “I doubt our relationship could have existed at all if I weren’t working. In terms of what other people think, I can’t do anything about that. You know, that’s not my preoccupation anyway. As long as I was able to work, I went about my business.”
That is true, but Krasner was also clear-eyed about her position in a male-dominated market, said Kumar.
“She was very cognizant of the gender dynamics and the gender politics. His career was the one that was more successful at the time.”
With that in mind, she made strategic choices. The couple settled in Springs, N.Y., at the tip of Long Island, a move Krasner favored to pull Pollock from Manhattan’s pressures and drinking.
He worked in a barn on the property on his vast canvases, while she painted first in the kitchen and later in a small upstairs bedroom.
Charting her own course
Reinvention defined Lee Krasner’s life and art. Born Lena Krassner in Brooklyn to Orthodox Jewish parents from a shtetl in what is now Ukraine, she came from a family unfamiliar with art.
She refashioned her identity through a series of names, first Lenore and then Lee Krasner. She carved out a bold career and became a consummate connector in New York’s art circles.
Journalist Mary Gabriel, author of the 2018 book Ninth Street Women, noted that unlike her husband, Krasner repeatedly shifted her style.
“Krasner was so fascinating because she changed, not even by the decade. Every few years, she tries something new,” Gabriel said. “She was always searching, which in a way is the most, I think, honest way to be an artist, because art is about discovery.”
Her experiments ranged from the “Little Images” of the late 1940s, dense fields of near-hieroglyphic signs on small canvases, to the monumental works she made after Pollock died in a 1956 car crash. Pollock had long battled alcoholism and depression and was unfaithful; his girlfriend at the time was among the passengers in the accident.
Krasner also proved financially astute. Following Pollock’s death, she more than tripled the asking price of Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) to sell it to the Met, helping to set a new benchmark not only for Pollock but for postwar artists more broadly.
For Past Continuous, Autumn Rhythm has been moved off its usual wall to a freestanding presentation, Kumar said.
“It is almost architectural in a way, because it’s set against this slate grey color,” she said. “The swirling blacks get animated in a whole new way, and the familiar teals and the familiar whites surge with a new energy.”
In the years after Pollock’s death, Krasner claimed fresh momentum. She took over the barn studio and produced sweeping, exuberant canvases full of vitality, Breslin noted.
“You see this incredible painting that’s almost 17 feet wide called The Seasons, that has these forms and bodies, eyes and body parts and these things that look like vegetation sprawling out of it,” he said. “So she makes, almost in a contradictory way, some of the brightest, most vibrant paintings the year after his death.”
In many respects, the exhibition is about Lee Krasner taking up her own space at last. Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous is on view at the Met through Jan. 31.
Krasner and Pollock at the Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts the show within its modern and contemporary galleries. The institution has been steadily reexamining women artists’ roles within the canon.
Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) remains one of the museum’s touchstones of Abstract Expressionism. The work sits alongside other postwar landmarks in the collection.
Beyond Pollock’s legacy, the exhibition foregrounds Krasner’s autonomy and resilience. Her story now intersects with the Met’s broader efforts to highlight underrecognized figures.
For information about the artists’ estates, visitors often turn to the legacy projects dedicated to Jackson Pollock. Krasner’s own archive and foundation continue to shape scholarship on midcentury American art.